


and I saw stars

by kwritten



Category: Roswell (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Rewrite S3, F/M, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Moving On, Multi, POV Female Character, Sad with a Happy Ending, Superpowers, Women Being Awesome, background Michael/Maria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 15:57:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3942724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au: at the end of s2 the royal four go home; leaving behind liz and kyle to negotiate their new powers alone; new relationships are formed and old friends are called back to roswell</p><p>No one missed them. They had lazy sex in cheap hotel rooms. She turned ones into hundreds with a flash of green and back again. She liked being with him in water-stained rooms that reeked of smoke and age. He drew out her screams of pleasure on cheap cotton bedsheets and she never felt more alive.</p><p>“I might be falling in love with you, Sean deLuca,” she said while they ate cold pancakes from Styrofoam containers with their fingers while draped only in white sheets.</p><p>He kissed her nose, “Damn. I was really hoping you were only using me for my body and my wheels.”</p><p>She wrinkled her nose and they forgot about the pancakes for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and I saw stars

_Tess killed Alex._  
Tess killed Alex.  
Tess killed Alex.  
Tess killed Alex.  
Tess killed Alex. 

It pounded in her ears louder than anything she’s ever heard before. Her feet slipped in the sand and she knew that Maria had her by the elbow and was dragging her along. She could feel Kyle behind them, his hands reaching out in case they fell. How silly. As if he could catch their hearts falling out of their chests. 

_Tess killed Alex._

It’s everything and it’s nothing. 

They have to know before they leave. 

_He_ has to know before…

“This is it!” Maria gestured to a hunk of rock that looked like every other hunk of rock and started pounding on it, screaming Michael’s name. It could be a plea or a prayer, Liz guessed that her voice joined in, there was a pain in her throat that told her she was crying out. 

Or that she was so rubbed raw, there’s nothing left but the wound. 

“They can’t hear us,” she finally gasped out, grabbing Maria’s hands that were already bleeding. 

So soft and delicate, her friend. Like a pure china doll – her skin always flawless and her hair always perfectly framing her rosy cheeks. She grabbed those hands and wished there was a way to stop them from bleeding. 

They do.

She doesn’t think of it then. 

No one noticed. 

There was too much else to distract them. 

“We just have to hope…” Kyle started to say, but Liz blocked him out. 

She’s lost her hope. 

_Tess is pregnant._  
Tess killed Alex.  
Tess is pregnant. 

Was this what he wanted, Future Max? Was this what they broke hearts for – her and her future-but-never-to-be-husband? For just another kind of death and pain?

 _We just have to hope…_ But there was nothing left. Nothing.

They were standing a couple feet away from the entrance when it opened. Liz saw Michael coming out, his face alight with one of those rare, soft smiles he saved only for Maria. “I couldn’t leave…” he started to say and then something pulled him back. His arms were reaching out for her, they heard Max shout, _Tess, no!_ and then a great flash of light blinded them. 

She could feel the ground beneath her rolling and buckling. There was something in the sky for a second before disappearing. Maria was on her knees, sobbing. Kyle was looking at her as if she had the answers. There are no answers. There was never anything but questions. That’s what she signed up for when she confronted Max in the band room about the glowing handprint on her stomach and the memories swirling in her mind that weren't hers. 

In her heart, a door closed. 

“Liz… Lizzie! He was staying for me! He was going to _stay_ and that…”

Liz dragged Maria to her feet and snapped her fingers in front of her friend’s face, “Focus, Maria. We need to focus.”

Maria crumpled beneath Liz’s hands, “He was going to stay for me. He was walking out the door and she—”

Liz smiled softly, “So you’ll know your whole life that it wasn’t his choice. That he would have stayed, that he didn’t…”

“Choose a murderess over the love of his life?” 

Liz straightened her shoulders and glared at Kyle, “Max made his choice.”

“He didn’t know, Liz,” Maria’s voice was thick with emotion and Liz knew somewhere deep inside that she should be comforting her friend, or listening, or something. 

She walked away and didn’t look back to see if they followed. 

 

It is five miles from the Crashdown out to the pod-chamber. Liz walked the entire stretch, her four-inch-boots redefining pain. And with every step she took through the hot desert, a mantra beat in time with her heart. _Tess is pregnant. Tess killed Alex. Tess is pregnant. Tess killed Alex._

_Max is gone._

By the time she arrived home, Sheriff Valenti had already confirmed the sad, tragic deaths of four more teens. She could tell by the real tears in his eyes that Kyle hadn’t told him the truth, that the daughter he was standing there mourning turned out to be a traitor and a killer. She walked past the herd of people into her room and fell asleep. 

She didn't shed a single tear. 

_Max is gone._

And that didn’t really seem to matter anymore. 

 

The guidance counselor told them that they could postpone their finals, but Liz walked in and aced each and every one. She had a 3.92 at the end of her junior year and her parents were worried. Maria took a month off of school and work and went on a road trip with her mother to San Diego. She sent emails that Liz didn’t respond to. Maria watched the stars at night, but Liz studied for entrance exams and SATs, head buried in books that held data and facts. She no longer had time or energy for dreaming. 

They were a little short-staffed around the Crashdown that summer so Liz pulled in Sean to tend grill. His soft eyes under long eyelashes made her feel like a normal girl with a normal life. The way he kissed her across the bar with all the lights on and everyone watching didn't shoot her full of sparks and there were 100% no flashes whatsoever and it felt _nice_ so she let him keep doing it. Maria wasn’t there to give them dirty looks and her parents just seemed grateful that she wasn’t curled up in a ball mourning. They’d have probably let her get a tattoo or a piercing if it meant she kept acting normal. 

Eventually Kyle began bussing tables because there’s nowhere else he wants to be. He refused to wear the alien antennas, but her dad let that go. 

After the rush of teen deaths caused by car crashes, the city – lead mostly by Maria’s mom and the bereaved Evans’ – called for an immediate re-instatement of Valenti as the official Sheriff. Which he did humbly and with a lot of tears. Liz figured without the aliens around, there’s not much more for him to do than go back to being a normal Sheriff. She hosted a “Welcome Back” party for him at the Crashdown and tried to ignore everyone whispering about her behind her back. 

She had gotten pretty much used to it by then. 

Funny the things that you can just grow accustomed to. 

Like no longer expecting Max Evans to walk through the door. Like no longer feeling an ache in your chest when his name is mentioned. Like no longer missing that ache. 

 

__

“I guess he wasn’t the love of my life,” she whispers. 

“Guess I’m not, either,” Sean says as he slips his finger inside of her and causes an ache she never knew she longed for. 

She never answers, just slides her tongue over his waiting lips with closed eyes and sees blissful, easy darkness without a single star. 

 

Maria came back a week before senior year and she wasn’t smiling the way she used to, but there were henna marks on her hands and feet and streaks of red in her long hair and that seemed good enough. Like her body was marked with the pain in a way that was beautiful and raw and honest. She jumped right back into her Crashdown uniform – even if it hung a little loose in places – and she didn’t mention Max’s name. 

Kyle hugged her and Liz pushed herself between them and Sean ran out from the kitchen to wrap them all up in his arms and it almost felt familiar. 

She reached up to caress the back of Sean’s neck and pretended not to see stars. 

 

The fryer had been on the fritz since before Michael... left. Liz figured that he probably kept the kitchen from burning down a half dozen times. Without his powers around, it was only a matter of time before there was a serious kitchen mishap. 

They were all lucky as hell that Valenti was the Sheriff again. He barely bat an eye at the blackened ceiling or the green handprint on Sean’s arm. He pulled an ace bandage out of his pocket, as if he was just waiting for this day, and threw it at Liz on the floor crouched beside Sean. 

“Maybe it’s time you put in that call,” he walked out to the diner to talk to her father and Liz shook her head. 

A fluke. 

She wrapped Sean’s arm before he had a chance to look at it and took control of cleaning and healing the wound for the next two days until the mark faded. 

And she didn't see stars when she kissed Sean goodnight. 

 

 

Things were supposed to be normal. They were. For a grand four months. But the grease fire in the kitchen was just the beginning of a road that pointed them right back to where they started. 

Later, Maria would say that it all started in gym class that first day back to school, when Liz saw Beatrice Porter break her ankle minutes before it actually happened. Kyle would always insist that it was months before, when she walked five miles through the desert and didn’t arrive home dehydrated and blistered. 

Sean says he always saw stars when he kissed her and for that she pulls her hair out of her ponytail and straddles him with a giggle. 

For Liz, it was real the night she went for a walk with her mother two weeks after senior year began. They used to go for walks together a lot more when she was younger, before she started closing the Crashdown and didn’t have time for slow walks with anyone who wasn’t Max Evans. 

Her mother was worried about her, she could tell. Sometimes she’d come in to the cafe and find Miss deLuca, Mrs. Evans, and her mother huddled in a booth whispering. It was nice that they worried and cared. She knew a lot of kids who didn’t have someone like that. If it wasn’t for Miss DeLuca, there’d be no one in the whole wide world who mourned the human that Michael might have been. (She asked once about Laurie Dupree, but the look Maria gave her clamped her lips shut. Funny how losing everything made it harder to talk to her best friend, when maybe it should have been easier.) There was a stiffness to her mother these days, a worried air to her voice, a hesitancy in her movements. 

It was suffocating. All that worry and anxiety and fear. 

She reached out for her mother’s hand and took it away. 

It felt like being ripped into a thousand pieces and stitched back together loosely. It felt nothing at all like the memories of Max healing her. It was entirely different. It wasn't science and cells and physical wounds. It was nothing she was prepared for and everything she was prepared for.

When they walked back into the Crashdown, the faint halo of light emanating from around her mother’s head was obscured by the lights inside. But she could still see it. 

“That’s too close, Liz.”

“I didn’t mean to…”

The Sheriff sidled into the booth beside Kyle and looked across the table at Liz and Maria, “I think it’s time you made that call.”

“But… it doesn’t make sense Sheriff. Max couldn’t…” Liz looked at her friends helplessly, “There wasn’t a _physical_ injury.”

Maria smiled sadly, “So don’t call Max.”

Sean reached down to tug on her ponytail, “That’s impossible, M.”

The Valenti’s escorted Maria home when she suddenly came down with a case of hysterical laughter and tears. Liz watched her go and felt like she was watching the last semblance of normalcy her pitiable life was clinging to walk out the door. 

 

Liz took Sean with her across the desert to a pub on the outskirts of Oakland, CA without explanation. It wasn’t that comfortable on the back of his bike and in hindsight, she recognized that a phone call or even a bus would probably have been the wiser choice. 

They left a message with the decrepit old soldier behind the bar and waited twenty-four hours before turning around and heading straight back home. No one missed them. They had lazy sex in cheap hotel rooms. She turned ones into hundreds with a flash of green and back again. She liked being with him in water-stained rooms that reeked of smoke and age. He drew out her screams of pleasure on cheap cotton bedsheets and she never felt more alive. 

“I might be falling in love with you, Sean deLuca,” she said while they ate cold pancakes from Styrofoam containers with their fingers while draped only in white sheets.

He kissed her nose, “Damn. I was really hoping you were only using me for my body and my wheels.”

She wrinkled her nose and they forgot about the pancakes for a while. 

_She sees him as a child blowing bubbles in a portable pool behind Maria’s house, she sees him in an orange jumpsuit and she feels his fear, she sees her face and it is beautiful, she sees him picking flowers for a gravestone with age-spotted hands. She sees his past and his future and everywhere she sees her face._

She drew back her head and looked him in the eye, “What did you see?”

He grimaced, “A lot of naked Max, actually.”

“Shut up!” she can’t help but laugh. She laughs a lot with him. She laughs more in his arms than she thought was possible, sides aching and cheeks stretched to the point of pain. 

He brushed back the hair away from her face and angled her on his lap so that he could slip back inside of her, chuckling when she closed her eyes and moaned softly, “I saw you in a cupcake dress, I saw you playing Monopoly with Maria and Alex, I saw you reading your grandmother’s articles, I saw stars.”

“What kind of stars?”

“Just stars,” he kissed her and she remembered that for some people, there’s nothing particularly special about stars. 

“We need to talk about this,” she said and he flipped her over on her back playfully.

“I’m sorry. I’m busy at the moment.”

“This is serious, Sean.”

“Okay,” he kissed her collarbone. “You talk. I’ll listen.”

He kissed the length of her, a straight line from her chin to her navel.

“You’re distracting me.”

“Guess your lecture on stars will have to wait.”

And it did. 

 

He took it remarkably well, all things considered. She explained as much as she could the next morning in the shower. He held her and asked her if she wanted to cry. She said she didn't and made it true by speaking it aloud. She kissed him under the stream of water and told him to leave, to let go, to say goodbye to aliens and other worlds and wars and stars and live his own, remarkably human life. 

He held her and swore he would never leave.

And since that was the first time anyone she loved had ever promised to stay, she took it in her hands like a gift and didn't heed the warning bells in her head that told her it couldn't be true. That no one can promise forever. 

 

 

Ava was waiting for them in the Crashdown when they got back. Her hair was longer and maybe a bit darker than Tess’ but just as curly and the piercings were smaller and a bit more subtle, as if that was as strong of a compromise as she could make. She was wearing a red pinstripe pencil skirt and jacket with heels. 

“You should have just called.”

Liz pulled her into a hug, “I needed a road trip anyway.” She held Ava out at arm’s length, “Why are you so fancy?”

Ava tossed her curls, “I’m like an official human now. Got a job and everything.” She winked at Sean, “Who’s the beefcake?”

“Oh… that’s Sean.”

“Great. You leave _any_ single guys around here for me?”

Liz smiled and Sean wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, “I’m sure there are plenty of hearts left for you to break.”

“Hey,” Ava held up her hands in defeat. “That’s not my style. I’m not Tess – remember?”

“Tess?!” Kyle stumbled through the door and looked torn between wanting to kiss Ava or strangle her. 

Liz side-stepped in front of her, “Kyle? This is Ava. Not Tess. Ava.”

“Wha—What is she doing here?”

“She’s here to … help.”

“What could she possibly help with now?!”

Liz stepped forward towards him and held out her hand, “With this, maybe.” A shield of green appeared between them and Kyle’s mouth dropped.

“Damn, babe. You’re like a superhero or something.”

“Or something,” Kyle agreed. “So I guess deLuca’s in the club now?”

Liz smiled, “Well I am sleeping with him.”

Kyle put his hands over his head, “LALALALA DIDN’T HEAR THAT. NICE TO MEET YOU AVA.”

Ava giggled behind her and it was so much like Tess’ giggle that Liz broke her concentration and the shield fell instantly.

“So she’s here to … what?”

“You’ll be next, Kyle. If Max healed you – actually brought you back – then you’re changed, too,” Ava’s somber tone whipped through Liz, halting her amusement at Kyle's discomfort in its tracks. “I’ll have to train both of you.”

“To do what?”

Ava shrugged, “Survive.”

The rest of the evening was a blur. Ava looked too much like Tess to be passed off as a cousin or a distant relation of the Valenti’s. Which meant ‘twin’ was really the only option left. Mrs. Evans followed her around with her eyes for weeks, doubt clear beneath her smile of welcome. The Valenti house had been enough for Tess, but Ava had lived too long on her own mettle, so she got an apartment in Michael’s building. Which was still Michael’s building even after Sean had taken over his apartment for the past five months. She also managed to produce a high school diploma (that Sean looked over and declared couldn’t be fake) and a full-time job at the airport. 

It took some time to adjust, but by Christmas Valenti and Kyle weren’t guarding themselves quite as much, Maria could actually relax around her, and Sean stopped teasing her about invisible antennas and green skin. 

Around Thanksgiving, Kyle created his first accidental wormhole. Luckily all he did was send the turkey into the future by about two hours so they didn’t have a disaster on their hands, but it still took Ava by surprise. 

Everything about them took Ava by surprise. Liz and Kyle seemed to be tapping into parts of their brains that the Royal Four in New York had never thought to access and … well… the others clearly were more worried about fitting in than standing out. 

 

Liz worried most about Maria. 

She had Sean – and maybe it wasn’t a fairy tale true love ever after, but they laughed and the sex was _amazing_ and he held her hand even after she revealed her powers – and Kyle had Buddha or football or a new cheerleader on his arm. Maria had her memories. 

“I could help, you know. If you wanted,” it said a lot about Liz that she had considered _helping_ without asking. Maybe it said more that she asked anyway, but it didn’t feel that way. 

“What, like take it all away?”

“Yeah – I mean, if you want me to.”

“Don’t touch my brain Liz Parker.”

“Okay! Okay… I get it but…”

“What – what helped you? And don’t tell me it was Sean deLuca’s… ew…”

Liz pressed her finger to a bottle of nail polish and the color changed from bubblegum pink to a light coral, “I said goodbye to Max a long time ago. We danced and then I looked back and he was gone.” Liz looked up at her friend and smiled, “Anything after that wasn’t _my_ Max.”

“Babe. Come on. You gotta stop mourning a life that happened to someone else.”

Liz nodded, “I made my peace with it Maria. I pushed him away for the sake of the world or whatever. And he made his own decisions.”

“Michael didn’t.”

Maria crawled into Liz’s lap, “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe he’ll come back.”

“Yeah… maybe.”

 

During the winter months, Maria clung to Ava. Something about Christmas – and possibly not having Isabel directing their every move – made Maria a little weepy, a bit more sentimental and a lot less optimistic. Not that Liz could blame her. It was their first holiday season without Alex… Without Max, Michael, and Isabel. Maybe it wasn’t until the cheesy holiday decorations went up that Liz realized just how large of an impact they had had on their lives. 

Instead of dwelling on a life she'd only been told about and never lived, she kissed Sean under cleverly placed mistletoe and held a New Year’s Eve party at the Crashdown and didn’t apologize for getting dizzy-drunk on champagne because a girl is only eighteen once. 

 

“You aren’t hiding from anything when we’re like this, are you babe?”

Sean sometimes got very serious and downright philosophical when his cock was in her mouth and she couldn’t respond with the kind of speed and authority that might make him stop. 

“I mean… how much of a rebound am I?”

“How much of a rebound do you want to be?” She smiled up at him and opened her mouth to finish what she had started, but he pulled her up so that she was sprawled against his chest. 

“I fell in love with you Liz Parker.”

Liz kissed him softly and didn’t answer.

He saw her dancing on a porch with a man that disappeared, he saw her learning to drive with her father in the passenger’s seat and Alex in the back giving pointers, he saw her buying her first bra with her mother, he saw her get her first ‘B’ on an exam in the sixth grade. 

“What did you see?”

He smiled lazily, “You. I only ever see you.”

Liz stood up and adjusted her work uniform, “You weren’t around when we handled this the first time, but you can only see … me… if I let you.”

“What does that mean?”

She flung it over her shoulder on the way out the door like it didn’t matter because she was eighteen and her short life had only ever dealt her a shitty hand, “It means I love you, too dummy.”

 

 

Prom was weird – too weird and too sad and so they opted not to go. Liz and Sean went out into the desert and got drunk and had sex under the stars. Maria forced Kyle and Ava to come to her house and watch terrible horror flicks and they did because no one wanted to be alone. 

Out in the desert – probably too close to the crash site than was strictly smart – Liz had a dream that she would call a nightmare for weeks but everyone else knew was a vision. 

She woke screaming Max’s name and sobbing. Tears streaming down her face for the first time in nearly a year. Sean held her against his chest until the shaking subsided. 

“Max is dead.”

 

Of course, this wasn’t exactly news to anyone else in Roswell, except for the people to whom it mattered. 

Ava did everything she could to find the source of Liz’s dream, but none of them could dreamwalk the way Isabel could. It was Vilandra’s special power, according to what Ava could remember from her first life. 

“This is stupid. We don’t even know if this has happened yet,” Liz finally burst out after hours of meditation on Ava’s bed. She could still hear Maria in the kitchen pacing back and forth whispering _Not Michael, please not Michael_ over and over again. “It probably _hasn’t_ happened yet. That’s how this whole ‘Liz’s Power’ thing works.”

Ava huffed and flopped down on the bed, “I thought maybe… we could send a message. To Lon—ah.. to Isabel or something.”

“Can you … _Could_ you and Lonnie connect? Like you have the mind-warp and she had the dreamwalking… could you channel that somehow?”

Ava shook her head, “Not that we ever did. Lonnie was kinda closed off.”

Liz looked down at her hands, “I guess that means we just have to wait.”

“What if all three of us tried? Or the two of us gave Ava our energy to amplify her power?” Kyle piped up from the living room.

Sean walked in with a glass of water in both hands, “Can we take a break on the mind-walking for an hour or so? You both look like shit.”

“Thanks Sean,” Ava flipped him off as she took the glass of water. 

He smiled and blew her a kiss as he sat down on the bed next to Liz, “I’m serious. If you wear yourself out like this, you aren’t any good to me.”

“THERE ARE CIVILIZED PEOPLE WITHIN EARSHOT!” Maria shouted from the kitchen. 

Liz smiled, kissing Sean on the neck with a sigh, “I could use a nap.”

Ava stood up, “Alright. Nap time. Kyle come spoon me. You two love birds buzz off.”

“WHAT ABOUT ME?!” 

“Maria can have the couch.”

“Oh goodie,” Maria sat delicately on the edge of the couch and hugged a pillow to her chest. “I get to have all the fun.”

Liz dreamt of fire and screaming, chaos without definition or end. She never really woke, but pulled Ava and Kyle into her nightmare. In a castle-like structure near an ocean, she watched Max die as if on repeat. Beside her, Ava screamed out Zan’s name and she wept for her friend. There was too much smoke, too much chaos, but she knew what to do. 

_We have to call out for Isabel._

_What if she’s not Isabel anymore?_

_We still have to try. If she’s still alive, she’ll hear us._

They shouted into the fire and the abyss and the smoke and the gloom until Maria and Sean shook them awake. 

In the aftermath, Maria put her arm around Liz’s shoulder, “So what comes next, fearless leader?”

“Hey, I’m not the queen here,” Liz pointed at Ava. 

Ava blushed.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Kyle said through a mouthful of burger. “We wait. We keep living and then maybe… they come back or they don’t. Liz has another vision or she doesn’t. Today isn’t that much different than yesterday.”

“Order’s up! Am I the only one working here?”

“Babe, chill.”

Sean flicked a towel at Liz’s passing form and she giggled and it almost felt like Kyle was right. Nightmares notwithstanding, today wasn’t all that different from the day before or the day before that. 

 

 

One year and two days after a spaceship took off with what was left of their hearts, Valenti called Ava around three o’clock in the morning because there were some strange reports of a green light and a brush fire near Frasier Woods. She dragged Liz out of Sean’s bed easily enough and they drove out to investigate. There were a half-dozen or so incident reports in the past year and none had been anything other than drunk joyriders wanting a story to tell their future grandchildren. If they ever made it home. 

It was practically routine by this point. 

They even stopped taking Sean and Kyle because honestly the guys weren’t good company if they didn’t have enough sleep. (They never took Maria, it hurt her too much, the hope that would inevitably crash down and leave her more broken than before.)

One year and two days after a spaceship took off with what was left of their hearts, Liz and Ava stumbled giggling through Frasier Woods and found Michael Guerin standing in a clearing naked as the day he stepped out of the pods. 

 

It took a lot of explaining – on both sides. 

Valenti declared it a town miracle, Michael coming home after a year of being missing. He apologized to the Evans’ personally, he was supposed to be in that rusty old Jeep with Max and Isabel the night they died, but decided he needed some air and got stuck in Mexico for a few months. Miss deLuca was probably the most angry out of all of them. He had to live with the black eye she gave him for nearly a week before Liz could safely make it go away. 

It was a wild story, but the town bought it because there had been too much tragedy not to accept the Prodigal Son back into the fold. 

It was that much more difficult for Michael to accept Ava, he flinched when she walked into a room for months. She took it graciously, even dyed her hair a ridiculous shade of mermaid-red and told him he was doing her a favor. 

He didn’t talk much, which was pretty normal actually. Liz had to constantly make sure that Ava didn’t push him too hard for details of her home. He didn’t seem ready to talk about what happened; his gaunt face and the scars on his back and arms that they couldn’t seem to heal said enough. 

 

Four days after they found him, Liz got a call from Isabel on her cell phone. 

“It’s me. It’s Isabel.”

“You’re alive.”

“Yeah… I’m in Seattle.”

“Should… I mean. Do you want—?”

“No. Don’t say anything. I’m going to stay here. It’ll be too much to explain to everyone.”

“Does Michael know?”

“I’ll tell him later.”

“Is…?”

“Max is dead. Or Zan or whatever. Both, I guess.”

“And Tess?”

“You don’t have to worry about Tess,” Isabel’s voice sounded serene and hard as glass in the same moment and Liz had the distinct impression that in that moment she was speaking to Vilandra and not the soft-hearted community service organizer Isabel Evans. “She killed Alex.”

“I know. _We_ know. We came to tell you but…”

“But it was too late. I’m sorry for not believing you.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Something should be.”

“What happened?”

“Didn’t Michael tell you?”

“Well he’s Michael.”

Isabel laughed and the sound broke Liz’s heart. 

“Should we prepare for someone to follow?”

There was silence on the other end for so long, Liz feared the call was lost.

“Isabel?”

“I heard you. Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m okay – but Michael had to go home for Maria and he promised Max… we both promised...”

“We’ll leave as soon as we can. Make it look normal. Teens leaving for college that slowly stop contacting their parents and then are never heard from again.”

“You planned this.”

“I had a contingency plan for everything. I couldn’t trust that Tess… you know.”

“I’ll call again.”

“Stay safe, Isabel.”

“Take care of him, Liz. He’s… he’s the only family I have left.”

 

 

Liz talked to Sean and Michael alone in the dark kitchen the week before graduation and wasn’t surprised that they were in agreement. She spoke the words of a general and didn't shed a single tear or waver in her decision. Michael’s arrival in Roswell had drawn the attention of aliens and rogue government operations alike. Every night it seemed Liz was waking from another nightmare-vision of them being captured or killed. They planned everything as well as they could. Maria cried and then laughed, kissing Michael as if there was nothing else in the world that mattered but that he was still alive, flesh and bones beneath her fingers. Ava joked that Liz was the best person to run away with because she always had an itinerary for everything. 

 

“Okay, so I had a van and food set aside and some clothes packed already, is that really such a surprise?” 

Sean pulled her into his lap, “No, babe. That’s totally and completely, 100% Liz Parker charm.”

Liz wrapped her arms around him and rubbed her nose on the soft part of his skin just beneath his ear. This was everything she had always been fighting for – a warm lap and soft lips and strong arms ready to catch her when she fell. 

“So…” Sean hesitated.

“So?”

“Is there room for me in this fugitive van?”

Liz stilled beneath his hands, “What?”

Sean shrugged, “I mean, it’s totally cool if you want to leave without me. I’d understand.”

“ _I_ wouldn’t.”

“Wait. What?”

“If you were running from the FBI and killer aliens and didn’t take me with you I’d be furious. I’d hunt you down through every corner of this earth until I found you and gave you a piece of my mind.”

Sean looked up at her, “So when did I stop being the rebound guy and start being the boyfriend?”

Liz rolled her eyes, “Duh. Like never. You’re still the rebound guy. I’m tossing you out the van window tomorrow morning.” She kissed him softly and he saw himself withholding an order from her at the Crashdown until she tiptoed up to kiss him, he saw the two of them playing paintball with Kyle and Ava giggling and covered in paint, he saw her kissing his chest when he slept, he saw them on a swingset under a bright moon, he saw his own face smiling down at her while she talked about biology or science or something. 

“What do you see, Liz Parker?”

She shook her head and wrinkled her nose in that exasperatingly cute way she did and kissed him until he stopped trying to ask.

 

In the aftermath of graduation, no one noticed three seniors slip away. There were so many cars and vans and trucks on the road, seniors heading off on final roadtrips to mark that effortless moment between childhood and possibility. Michael rode ahead with Maria on the back of his motorcycle, her arms wrapped around him with a possessiveness that spoke volumes of their year apart. Kyle drove as long as Ava allowed him to before calling him grandpa rather disparagingly and tickling him. 

Liz and Sean lay sprawled out in the backseat between coolers and duffle bags full of clothing and personal affects, daydreaming and not saying anything at all. 

 

 

Somewhere on the road between nowhere and the past, Sean went looking for Liz behind a dark convenience store and found her in an ancient phone booth. 

“We could come get you, Iz… Well you know how he worries about you… I just don’t think you should be alone… Well that’s so great! That’s so great to hear!... ah huh… yeah of course… YOU DIDN’T!.... Iz? Isabel are you sure there’s nothing--?... well alright. I won’t push this time… You shouldn’t be alone… let someone in, Iz. Fall in love. You deserve it… Am I--?” She looked up and waved to Sean with wiggling fingers, “Yeah. I really am. … Well of course it doesn’t make anything better and if Michal and Maria are anything to go on, it doesn’t make things easier and if Max and I--- it’s not always forever, but you still deserve something good. We all do... … Love you, too. … I’ll tell them you said hey. … Talk to you soon…. Bye, Iz.”

“Everything okay?” Sean whirled his girlfriend around in his arms, lifting her off the ground so her feet dangled somewhere below his knees.

“Everything is wonderful.”

He kissed her then, in a filthy alley between their past and their futures and she saw stars.


End file.
